Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.16
Last-Modified: 2000/07/29
MR RAMPTON: I see the two words "extermination" one on top of other.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you mean different from the 1939
translation.
A. Yes, but the word that is different of course is
Judentums
what does your Langscheidt tell us about that?
MR RAMPTON: I doubt it has it in, I am not going to bother
with it.
A. Can I ask that you look in Langscheidt because I do
not
. P-140
have a copy here.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: You accept "Jewry" is the right
translation?
A. Jewry, Judaism, but not Jews. If somebody talks about
wiping out Christianity that would be the parallel, my
Lord.
MR RAMPTON: This is only Dr Goebbels speaking, does it
matter?
A. What is the standard dictionary?
Q. You cannot -- we cannot believe a word Dr Goebbels
says,
can we?
A. This is your Judentums.
Q. I am just looking to see if it is in, it may be Jewry
collective... there is a choice Mr Irving, which would
you
like to choose?
A. Wiping out Jewry, wiping out Judaism, it is not the
same
as exterminating the Jews this is a manipulated
translation.
Q. It has Jewry?
A. He is saying that this is evidence of the wiping out
of
the Jews.
Q. No, look at it "Jewry" big letters, extermination of
Jewry?
A. Extermination of Jewry.
Q. Yes.
A. Is not the same as annihilating Judaism.
Q. No, but the two meanings are both there?
A. He has chosen once again the tendentious meaning,
which
. P-141
highly is disreputable for an historian to do.
Q. Perhaps that is because it is consistent with the rest
of
the text?
A. No, it is incumbent upon an historian, just as a
lawyer to
give the benefit of the doubt to the person you are
impugning; am I correct?
Q. No, you are not correct. Not in this case.
A. In an ambiguity.
Q. No, there is not ambiguity here --
A. There is a total ambiguity.
Q. Mr Irving, I go back: "He had prophecised to the Jews
that
if they", nothing to do with Judaism, "once again
brought
about a world war they would experience their own"
that is
to say the Jews own extermination "vernichtung", the
same
word in the next sentence.
A. This is Dr Goebbels, right?
Q. Yes, yes.
A. OK.
Q. No, that is Hitler.
A. Hitler as reported four years later by Dr Goebbels.
Q. By Dr Goebbels. The world war is there. The
extermination of Jewry must be the necessary
consequence.
The one flows quite naturally and logically from the
other.
A. In the first case he has taken the third meaning of
the
word. In the second case he has taken the second
meaning
. P-142
of the word. In neither case has he taken the primary
meaning of the word, primary translation. If I was to
do
that I think I would be hearing about it shortly in
this
court.
Q. Eradication, extermination, annihilation all mean the
same
thing --
A. I do not think so. I gave an example if one talked
about
eradicating Christianity, drug addiction, you do not
go
about wiping out the drug addicts.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have the point.
A. -- I think there is room for manoeuvre on something
like
this and it is incumbent on people not to take the
evil
meaning of a word when there are much better sources.
MR RAMPTON: There is only room for manoeuvre for those who
want to find room to manoeuvre?
A. Like people who pay witnesses for expert cases like
this.
Q. I must make a note to prompt you to put that
allegation to
Dr Longerich --
A. I shall, to all the witnesses.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us press on with the translation.
MR RAMPTON: This question must be seen without
sentimentality
"die frage ist ohne jede sentimentalat so
betrachten" correct?
A. -- that is a fair translation.
Q. Good. We are not here in order to have sympathy with
the
Jews, "wir sind nicht dasu da, mitlied mit den juden"
. P-143
correct so far?
A. Yes.
Q. "Sondern nur mitleid mit unserem deutschen volk so
haben"?
A. Just to have sympathy.
Q. Rather we should sympathise with our own German
people?
A. A loose translation, but I am not tendentious.
Q. If the German people have now once again sacrificed as
many as 160,000 dead in the eastern campaign, then the
authors of this bloody conflict must pay with their
lives (German spoken) authors?
A. Yes.
Q. (German spoken) of this bloody conflict, therefore --
with
their lives -- account for, must account for or pay
for?
A. Yes, this is Dr Goebbels.
Q. It may be?
A. I am sorry it is, because it is not in the
subjunctive.
If it is not in reported speech. If he was reporting
what
Hitler had said, it would be not "hat" but "ete", that
is
the way reported speech is done in German.
Q. You see no ground for thinking that Hitler said
anything
like this?
A. This is Dr. Goebbels' gloss on what Hitler had said.
Q. You think it is just a gloss on what Hitler said. Do
you
think it is a invention?
A. That is what the language tells us Mr Rampton it is
not in
subjunctive, so it is not him reporting what somebody
else
. P-144
said.
Q. Could you answer my question.
A. I have given you the answer.
Q. Do you think it is an invention?
A. Is what an invention? He is writing down his own
opinions. Goebbels --
Q. None of this is attributable to what Hitler said on
this
occasion when he addressed the Reich and Gau leaders
on
12th December --
A. -- Mr Rampton, you do not know and I do not know
because
we do not have a transcript of that speech.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: How much do you say Mr Irving of this
little
snippet is a report of what Hitler said to the
gaulieter?
A. -- as I say, in all my editions of Hitler's War,
Hitler
made the original speech on January 30th 1939 and he
repeatedly and ominously repeated and recorded what he
had
said on that occasion, saying I prophecised then and
I will say it again and those who laughed then they
are
laughing on the other side of their faces now. This
kind
of thing. He said it something like eight or nine
times
during the war on 8th November 1942 and so on.
Q. Answer my question.
A. It was one of his stock speeches. So I know with a
pretty
fair degree of certainty how much of this quotation
Hitler
actually said because Hitler was always saying the
same
thing and how much is probably Goebbels adding his own
. P-145
private gloss.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: But this is something, this is in part at
any
rate a report by Goebbels of what Hitler said in 1941
to
the gaulieter?
A. I appreciate that, yes.
Q. Nothing to do with 1939. My question, if I can ask
you
for an answer, is how much do you say of this snippet
from
Goebbels' diary is a report of what Hitler said to the
gaulieter?
A. I would say half is.
Q. Which half? Half in reported speech and half where he
repeats exactly the kind of sentence that Hitler had
said
so many times before, but what I will not accept is
that
he necessarily used the word vernichtung, when Hitler
frequently used other equally vague and ambiguous
words
and indeed euphemisms. I am quite happy to accept
that.
And personally I would consider it deeply shocking if
an
historian was to pin any kind of hypothesis just on
this
third order information which is what this actually
is.
I know it has been done quite recently by Dr Christian
Gerlach who is a young Hungarian historian. He has
tried
to pin a major hypothesis on it, but he is on the
wooden
path as the Germans says, and the fact that the
sentences
are not in the subjunctive makes it quite plain that
Goebbels is not reporting what Hitler said. We can
ask
Dr Longerich this on the question of language if I am
. P-146
right about the subjunctive.
MR RAMPTON: You will have the opportunity to do that and
you
can ask Professor Evans too whose German is probably
as
good as yours.
A. I doubt it but I would prefer to ask Dr Longerich.
Q. He wrote it. Tell me this, is it your belief that
Hans
Frank, Governor General, was a Poland, Eastern Poland,
at
this meeting on 12th December?
A. He was a Reichsleiter. This was a speech to the
Garleiters and the Reichsleiter, so the likelihood is
that
he was present.
Q. And the word "vernichtung" is not really capable of
what
we might call being characterized as a Goebbels'
invention
or exaggeration because it was after all the word that
Hitler used in his speech in the Reichstager in 1939?
A. Yes.
Q. So it would not be the least bit surprising if Hitler
had
used the same word on this occasion, would it?
A. Yes.
Q. Why?
A. The word "vernichtung" is not killing. It is not
unambiguously killing. It is destruction.
Q. So you say. You say that. I do not know accept that
answer?
A. It is the primary meaning of the word.
Q. Whether you call it extermination or annihilation,
which
. P-147
are his two primary senses, it is a literal ----
A. Excuse me, extermination was not the primary sense.
Q. No annihilation was?
A. It was the third sense. You said extermination or
annihilation which are its primary senses.
Extermination
is not. It is number 3.
Q. What difference do you see between annihilation and
extermination?
A. Can you read out the three meanings?
Q. No, I ask you in English. What difference do you see?
A. I have been annihilated by these books but I have not
been
exterminated. Is that sufficient for you?
Q. Yes, and I annihilate you in cross-examination but I
do
not exterminate you, I hope! Of course I see the
difference. Seriously, Mr Irving, please,
annihilation of
the Jewish race, come, it is not difficult. German is
not
a mystery language any more than English. What does
it
mean, be honest?
A. If Adolf Hitler was considering annihilation to be the
biological liquidation of the Jewish race, why would
he
have been talking the entire time about the
Madagascar?
Plan.
Q. He talked about the Madagascar plan I think as late as
sometime in 1942 by which time he had already issued
an
order that the Madagascar plan was to be put to sleep?
A. He talked about it on July 24th 1942.
. P-148
Q. Yes, and it was a dead duck?
A. This is your word, but why would Hitler talk about
even in
private with his staff?
Q. Because Hitler it would appears, if one reads his
table
talk ----
A. He is talking about it in a conversation with Bormann
and
Himmler, the people who we know were the actual
murderers.
Q. It is not to be taken seriously. It cannot be. The
Brits
had occupied Madagascar in May of 1942?
A. The British had occupied large parts of the world
which
the Germans subsequently reoccupied.
Q. Like Crete. So your thesis is that Hitler had it in
mind
the German Navy would travel all the way to the East
Coast
of Africa, that huge island, and spend a lot of ships
and
men capturing the island so they could put the Jews on
it
in 1942?
A. I know I am not supposed to ask you questions, but you
are
not suggesting that the table talks are fake, are you?
Q. No, no that they are fake, no, far from it. On the
contrary, the table talks are very good evidence of a
man
who sometimes waffles, sometimes deceives, sometimes
talks
at endless length about nothing very much?
A. Rather like counsel in this case!
Q. If you say so.

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